


Lay down your head and rest

by Melime



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Community: femslashficlets, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Inspired by Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 12:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: Alicia had done enough.





	Lay down your head and rest

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Deite sua cabeça e descanse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853910) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



> Written for the [femslashficlets](http://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) community, challenge #066 - song (All Those Yesterdays - Pearl Jam).

Alicia couldn’t stand this anymore. Years, she spent years of her life fighting to rebuild her career, only to have that taken from her time and time again. It was too much, she couldn’t stand that anymore. She went to college because she was in love with the idea of law, but she returned to work because she didn’t have a choice, she had children to support and she was all alone. After all these years, she would have hoped that things wouldn’t be like this anymore, that she would at least enjoy some security, but that wasn’t the case. She was still struggling to get by, trying to build a client base, working under inadequate circumstances. At some point, wine had stopped being a comfort and came a necessity, and she didn’t want to think about what that meant.

It was all too much, and she was falling apart.

Lucca was the only one who saw that, the one person to be by her side when she was weak and vulnerable and crying because she didn’t know what to do. Lucca held her tight and promised to love her, promised to be everything Alicia needed. Lucca saw the ugliest part of her, the part that Alicia did her best to keep hidden from her friends, her family, her colleagues, and she wasn’t scared by it, she didn’t move away.

Instead, Lucca offered her the support she needed, holding her for what felt like hours, until Alicia didn’t feel anymore like her world was spinning out of control.

“I’m here for you,” she would say, over and over. “It’s ok, you can let go now, you have done enough, you are enough, you can rest now.” A litany of comfort words, spoken by someone who didn’t know how to comfort another person, who never had this experience, but who was willing to try, because Alicia needed her, Alicia needed this.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t what Alicia thought love should be when she first met Will, or when she decided to marry Peter, or even when she started her affair with Will and was almost willing to let go of everything just to be with him. But this wasn’t what she thought her life would be like at this age. Over the years, she was surprised many times in discovering that what she wanted, what she needed, wasn’t what she thought she wanted, and after so many surprises, she was too tired to question this one.

For once, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about what everyone else would think, or about being tried in the court of public opinion, after everything that happened, she wasn’t even vaguely worried that the media might distort this, claim she left her husband because he lost the primaries, or that the entire marriage was a farce. She didn’t care anymore, she had faced too much, worried too much, maintained a public persona for too long, and now it didn’t matter anymore. The only opinion she cared about was her children, but they wouldn’t blame her for this, they knew what she had gone through.

Suddenly, it was as if every bad thing that had happened to her over the years was being washed away. All those yesterdays, filled with pain and stress, had passed, she survived them all and kept fighting, and now they were gone and she was still there. With all she had faced, she knew there was nothing in her future that she couldn’t stand, she would survive any future challenges as she had survived those in the past, and she would face them with her head straight and no hesitation.

She still had enough time, she wasn’t young by any measure, but she still had enough time. Diane, her mentor, her friend, her rival, had dedicated her life to work and found love when she was older than Alicia was now, and it was hard not to see how happy and in love she was. Time and age weren’t deterrents, she could still have a life.

But that was a problem for tomorrow, all the implications of realizing that Lucca was the one person who was there for her, of knowing now that Lucca would love her even though she was this mess of suppressed feelings and stress and regrets, all of that could wait.

For now, for those moments, that day, that night, all she wanted was to rest. Alicia wanted the world to stop still so she could just lay down her head on the curve of Lucca’s neck and stay there, ignoring everything else. Just for one day, she wanted to stop running from problems or running towards solutions, just stop, stop running and rest.

The last few years were a mixture of frenetically running around trying to keep her life from falling apart and numb memories from when she couldn’t stand it anymore even as she kept going, fueled by alcohol and the sense that she couldn’t just give up because she had people who depended on her, because she couldn’t count on her husband to be a father to their children so she had to do it all alone, but not anymore.

Zack was an adult, off to live his own life, and Grace was almost out the door as well. She did it, she did everything that was asked of her, she even supported Peter through his release from prison and return to politics and it wasn’t her fault that he dreamt too big and his pretensions had him falling so hard to the ground. She did everything that was asked of her, and now all she wanted to do was rest.

Lucca was right, she had done enough, she could stop now, rest and take her bearings. She had enough time for that. She could just stop and be comforted and loved and it was everything that she ever wanted, just not in the way she thought she would have wanted it.


End file.
